


The Gentlewoman's Guide to Taming One's Lassiter

by TycoonTwister



Category: Psych
Genre: Drama, Friendship, Gen, Juliet being the bamf she is, Partners Feelings, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, but also the partners butting heads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 03:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TycoonTwister/pseuds/TycoonTwister
Summary: To Deej – who deserves all the Psych goodness in the world for her beautiful stories and her wonderful kindness.Carlton and Juliet, Lassiter and O'Hara - we all know the story and the deeds of Santa Barbara's (badge-weaeing) best detective duo. Or do we?Sitting in the Maternity Ward of the hospital where she's just been introduced to her messily-born gooddaughter, Juliet writes down her version of it - how they met, how they clashed, and how they ultimately found each other - as a letter to Lily Nora Lassiter. Her very own guide to taming wild Carltons - and to finding your best friend in the process.





	The Gentlewoman's Guide to Taming One's Lassiter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DinerGuy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinerGuy/gifts).



> To Deej – who deserves all the Psych goodness in the world for her  
>  beautiful stories and her wonderful kindness.

**A Gentlewoman’s Guide to Taming One’s Lassiter**

Juliet O’Hara sat on her blindingly-white plastic chair, the sixth in a row of equally white plastic chairs lining the hospital corridor, crossed her feet at the ankle – the maternity ward nothing but rustling wheels and soft whispers – and took a sip from the coffee her sometimes-gallant boyfriend got her from the cafeteria. 

It was terrible – churning on her tongue like a monster wave of burnt coffee beans. That didn’t surprise her: her line of work meant she had become uncomfortably intimate with the Santa Barbara General in her years here: waiting for news about friends, shuffling past the sliding doors of the ER with pounding headaches and twisted ankles and swats of scraped skin. The horrible coffee tasted like the day the Chief gave birth to Iris and she and the Psych boys dropped by to congratulate her, only to find her partner shaky and smiling at the windows of the nursery; it reminded her of Shawn’s pineapple-scented skin when she hugged him after finding out she wasn’t dying of a terrible exotic virus, of all the times she wrestled Carlton to get checked out after car crashes, scuffles, random acts of heroic stupidity. It tasted like anticipation, and chronic lack of sleep, and of life. 

Still, tonight the thing tasted almost sweet – and not thanks to the three sugar packets Shawn must have dumped in it. 

She took a second gulp, and strained to listen to the voices floating out of the third room down the corridor – so quiet, a wavering of giggles. She found herself smiling against the Styrofoam rim of the cup. 

Juliet had stumbled out of her airport gate less than one hour ago, completely forgone sleep, forgotten to pack a change of underwear or a makeup purse or anything but the puffy parka and the pantsuit she was wearing. Her work heels pinched savagely. Her head pounded. 

She was so happy she felt it moving like a living thing under her skin. 

Lily Nora was the most beautiful baby Juliet had ever seen. Despite her natural suburb-Mom protectiveness, she had never been big on the baby-coddling – and actually always felt vaguely awkward gawking at other people’ kids, cooing at them like monkey pets. In fact, it was _Carlton_ – oh yes, her stoic, ice-eyed, sharp-edged partner – she had sometimes caught staring in awe at a witness’s toddler chortling on her lap, at the families walking past their car during stakeouts, the blue of his eyes turned indigo with softness. 

(She never mentioned that she noticed until he breached the topic with her; she would carry the secret of it to her grave.) 

Yes, Juliet’s memories of the hell-born wraiths she and her brothers had been as toddlers were too vivid for her to feel comfortable around babies. Yet, the moment she walked in the soap-smelling, white-curtained room Marlowe had been – rather uselessly – rushed in and laid eyes on her new goddaughter, Juliet felt something powerful pull at her: a hook, punching right through her breastbone, stretching between her heart and the little bundle of pinkish blankets. 

She felt that powerful thing stir at the sight of her partner, too: curled tightly around the baby in his arms, lips touching Lily’s woolly head like a sunflower turning to the sun, the two of them basking in each other’s warmth. 

A flare of premonition, then. _They will always belong to each other,_ the hook in her ribs had said; Juliet trusting it with absolute faith. _And you will always protect them._

Juliet had leaned further over her partner’s shoulder, brushed Lily’s cheek with the tip of a finger. 

_Of course I will._

When Lily yawned awake and turned a pure blue gaze on her, Juliet choked on something like tears. 

_She has your yes, Carlton, exactly the same blue – it’s, gosh, how did your DNA manage_ that _?_

He had looked away, half-shrugging, the baby in his arms. _All babies have blue eyes when they are born._

He was aiming for flippant; he was also failing at it, and failing badly. Juliet shared a knowing look with Marlowe – who was half-napping in the fluff of her sheets and quilts and clearly enjoying the spectacle. 

They both knew that Lily’s blue was nothing like the jellyfish hue of newborns’ eyes. They both knew that even if Carlton looked way shakier and flustered than the woman who actually gave birth to a child in the back of a food truck, pride was almost _physically_ pouring off him, making him brim with light. 

Sitting now in her plastic chair, Juliet felt the powerful thing currently lodged in her chest was still pulsing: still thudding softly, tethering her to that room and the people inside it. A vertigo of marvel. 

_I have a niece,_ she thought, stomach somersaulting around the sloshing waters of bad coffee. _Carlton has a child. We are grown-ups – for real._

Going back to the beginning – moving backwards through the cases and the heartache and the _fun_ of the Santa Barbara years, still blazing behind her eyelids – was natural; inevitable. Juliet saw the naive bumblebee she had been, with her cringy hair-clips and ill-fitting department store jacket, ugly as only 2000s clothes could be, as clearly as if she were standing there in the corridor, before the corkboard with the pastel-colored kitten posters pinned to it. She remembered the first day of work of that Floridian bumblebee, hiding munched nails in her fists, the lush Californian light spilling across the precinct’s floors, the shock of uniforms calling her _detective_. The lanky man with the obscene tie the Chief was introducing her to, the polar opposite of the tanned playboy she had expected a West Coast detective to look like, that word vibrating between them, in her teeth, in the hard handshake he gave her – partner. _Her_ partner. 

Oh, who would have imagined that word would have come to mean this – this _much_? If she popped up Betwitched-style in front of that painfully young Jules and told her about it, would that bumblebee, the one driving home in a sad heap of exhaustion and insecurities after her first day, crawling under her pink duvet in her rented apartment, believe her – believe one day she would swell with pleasure of the simple idea of her partner being happy? Probably not. Scratch that – definitely not. 

Somehow, that made the story even better. 

And it _was_ a good story. 

Oh, don’t get her wrong: their years with the Psych had been chock-full of flashier adventures. They had been filled with _Shawn_ , who took root in her like a stubborn orchid refusing to get ripped off, setting her ablaze down to the last nerve like a shot of adrenaline. There were more dramatic stories to tell – more spectacle, more action, more charm. 

Yet, yet that was probably her favorite story: her most beloved bit of the magic the four of them had conjured together. The taming of a wild Carlton Lassiter. And of a Juliet O’Hara, too. 

One that is worth telling. 

In one fluid motion, Juliet uncrossed her legs, straightened, and started digging in her purse – the seed of an idea quickly blossoming into a full-blown plan. There was no time to get a real notebook from the hospital gift shop. Shawn and Gus were back at the station with McNab, wrapping up their improbable food truck case; she calculated she wasn’t going to have more than one hour and half for this. She finally found her evidence spiral notebook – so vintage in this era of rookies typing draft reports directly into their pale sleek iPhones; a scattering of pastel-colored highlighters and spare ballpoint pens. She decided they would do. 

Juliet took a final sip from her coffee – amazingly, already lukewarm in the uterus-hot limbo of the hospital – rested it on the empty chair on her left, and opened the notebook to a new page, biting off the cap of the pen with her teeth. 

After receiving Carlton’s uncharacteristically incoherent call – his voice going hazy and giddy whenever he said the words ‘baby’ or ‘Lily’ - Juliet had made her poor green bug burn through every red light on the way to the airport, and spent the whole flight thinking of baby gifts. It was a good way not to completely freak out, or not to give in to the urge to turn the freckled woman with the twins sitting next to her shrieking _My best friend has just had a baby and my boyfriend nearly got placenta all over his hands_ . 

Socks, a hand-knitted quilt, a funny onesie with little handcuffs embroidered on the front? She’d seen that one in a shop back in Frisco, made a mental note to come back for it. Mmh. Sounded a bit conventional. A bit on the nose. 

Now, now Juliet knew what she could get Lily Nora. It wasn’t a gift the baby would be able to enjoy for a good few years, sure – but it was one she _knew_ she would appreciate. Lily was bound to inherit her father’s inquisitiveness, after all. 

Juliet would get her goddaughter – Gosh, the weight of the title, as warm and heavy as a real baby against her chest – a story. The story of her, and of her father. 

She smiled again at the whispered giggling coming from Marlowe’s room, pinned the notebook against her knee. Suddenly, she was writing. 

* 

Dear Lily, 

Hi. It’s Aunt Jules’s talking here. I’m not sure when you’re going to read this letter: if you’re seven or thirteen or eighteen, maybe, and you’ve just found it tucked away and forgotten in your desk drawer while packing for college. (And oh, if that’s the case, do me a solid: go hug your dad and tell him there’s nothing to worry about and you’ll be fine, because you’re Lily Nora ‘Danger’ Lassiter. He’s probably acting all stoic and nonchalant, but he needs it. Trust me.) 

Anyway, it’s not that important: I’ll just imagine you reading this sprawled on your bed, all knees and elbows and beautiful blue eyes, the freckles you hate dotting your nose all the way to the eyebrows. Don’t worry about them, by the way: they come from the father’s side of your family, and your Dad assured me they fade away with puberty, and only came out if a Lassiter spends an ‘ungodly amount of time in the sun’ (his words, not mine). 

You’re probably wondering why I’m writing you this letter, mere hours after you are born: that’s a good question. The fact is, Lily-love, that even as your parents are just getting used with the reality of you and have barely had time to find you a name, I’m already planning to spend an awful amount of time with you. I’ll probably be here every other Christmas, at the very least; I will send your gifts for birthdays and good grades and any holiday I can think of, spoiling you half-rotten despite how loud your Dad is going to (very unconvincingly) growl and grumble about it. I’ll try to be there for graduation ceremonies and school pageants, and take you shopping whenever I’m in town, and be the best aunt I can be. 

You’ll see a lot of me and Uncle Shawn (and Uncle Gus, of course), I’m afraid: because I love you, and because your Dad will always be my best friend, and most importantly, my partner. Which isn’t an easy thing to explain in a hasty letter scribbled on college-ruled paper, no amount of colored Sharpies changing this. 

I’ll still try to do it, Lily-lou. You’ll probably see us together, your father and me – and oh, you can’t imagine how much I want this, how much I believe in this future. You’ll see us talk on the phone for hours and laugh at extremely inappropriate jokes, and we’ll tell you lots of stories about all the times we rushed in with blazing guns to save the day. (How many times has your Dad told you the story of his Old Sonora duel? Three? Three-thousand? I’m betting on three-thousand). 

But it hasn’t always been like that. There was a time when nothing of it was even imaginable – when _O’Hara and Lassiter_ was not going to happen. We were still so lonely, back then – so lost, each in their own way. We were still so _angry_. 

That’s why I’m writing this story, my dearest Lily: to show you that sometimes the people who are going to be as necessary to you as your lungs and your bones come upon you with a bump – even with a crash. That you may be growing exactly in the moment it hurts the most. That it’s never too late to find your place – to learn to be the best version of yourself. 

Before we get this thing going, know this: you are loved. You are the most loved child in the whole world, probably. I’ve seen your Dad holding you, seen his face when you grabbed those slender, perfect fingers of his, and known he will always love you, ferociously, no matter how much you two are going to fight and scream and disagree on everything. I’ve seen this, and know I will never stop loving you _either_ – no matter what happens 

Know this, Lily-love, and let me take you on a journey. 

You have to picture the scene. Close the door, get comfortable, take a breath. It’s a movie: an epic-ish kind of tale. 

It’s 2006, and your Aunt Jules is climbing the steps of her new precinct on her first day as Detective O’Hara: terribly young, terribly tired, terribly scared. She has barely slept at all the previous night, and the coffee she had gulped down at the diner on State Street hadn’t helped, the image of the green-eyed boy making snakes out of bending straws still floating through her mind. The title, the badge at her hip, it all still hang uneasily on her; she feels assaulted by the world around her, the light, the voices, the ringing of phones, the echo of dozens of busy shoes, like she were a newly-hatched chick of a cop. 

She still makes herself walk across the room, walk up to the Chief’s glass door, despite the drawn shutter all around it; she still makes herself rap on it, steeling her face into a friendly smile despite the heart trying to crawl out of her throat. She has worked too hard for this: shaped her body into toned muscle, trained with her gun till it felt like an extension of her hand. She has scars for her trouble, calluses under her pink-lacquered nails; she may make herself look soft and sun-sweet, but inside, she’s hungry. She’s hungry for everything this job is offering her, and she barely realizes it herself. 

The Chief – who is Karen Vick, who I presume will be your third unofficial aunt – called young Jules – _me_ – in. The blood in my temples throbbed so hard it edged my vision in red, so I registered only flashes of the office: the glossy wood of the desk, a blond woman in a blue business suit behind it, an improbable fish-shaped paperweight with colors swirling in the glass. A man, son the edge of my vision: an impression of lanky height, arms crossed, a black shoulder holster. 

The man was half-slumped against the wall, like a schoolboy who found himself in detention and resented everyone involved for it. His clean-shaved face was twisted into a scowl so fierce it seemed to vibrate in the air, warping it with its heat. 

I smiled at him, uneasily waiting for the softening my smiles usually triggered into people, the unclenching I’d seen happen with suspects and colleagues and that was one of my best cop techniques. 

Only there was no unclenching at all. The man actually scowled _harder_ , the heat of it turned white-hot. It left my fingertips tingling. 

The Chief’s voice saved me. I turned back to her so fast I heard a plastic-like click in my neck. The Chief was terrifying too, of course, but in a no-nonsense, sleep-deprived way that was still preferable to the silent seething of the man in the corner. As I listened to the Chief’s little welcome speech, half my mind wondering if my peach lipstick had smeared on my teeth, another part of me realized how unused I was to feel such hostility in the people around me. The man at my back was almost _throbbing_ with anger; I was pretty sure if the whole bullpen suddenly fell silent and held their breaths, I would be able to hear it pulse through the linoleum floor, all the way up my bones. I had never met anyone so openly, fiercely furious; not in my boisterous Scottish family, not among my fun-loving Miami colleagues. It made me uncomfortable; shook something loose inside me. 

(There was just one person who had ever felt quite so angry, quite so furious; but I wasn’t ready to admit who that person was yet.) 

I had seen the detective badge glittering at the man’s hip. I distinctly remember that as I kept nodding enthusiastically and slightly off-key to Vick’s words, I thought to myself, _why, I can’t imagine how being this guy’s partner must be;_ the relief of not being the poor soul chosen for the role. 

I distinctly remembered how exactly three seconds later Vick wrapped up her speech, stood up with ease despite the baby bump under her blouse, and gestured for the man to step closer. 

He obeyed, but barely, feet scraping slowly across the marble floor. My heart tumbled all the way to my feet. The space between my shoulder blades tingled, and I knew what she would say even before the Chief opened her lips. 

_No,_ I silently screamed. _No no no._

Vick pulled the man closer with a sharp yank at his sleeve. Smiled, or bared her teeth in warning, or both. 

_Detective O’Hara, this is Carlton Lassiter – our capable Head Detective. And your new partner._

I froze. Looked at the man. He looked like someone how had caught the flu bug that had been lurking around the office for days, stricken, but not surprised; as pained by the news as I was. I wasn’t sure if the thought was comforting or just insulting. 

_But,_ I stuttered, unable to keep the words in before they spilled out, busily digging my own grave, _but a Head Detective – No. I mean, no. There must be a mistake, I’m just –_

_No mistake,_ the Chief cut me off. Fanged smile still on place. _Detective Lassiter’s partner has recently been transferred – so he’s in need of a new one, and you’re in need of someone showing you the ropes. You have excellent qualifications. You two will be fine, I’m sure._

(Years later, as we took coffee together at a delightful bakery-coffeehouse in San Francisco I simply _must_ show you, Karen would confess me that day she had very nearly burst into laughter, watching the two of us standing there, crestfallen and pleading like grounded kids; that she had kept her fingers crossed under the desk for the whole time, and hoped it was less of a terrible idea that it sounded at the moment.) 

The young Jules I was understood, then, that there was no way out of it; no escape. If I wanted this job, I’d have to take this: the partner I had fantasized about during the purgatory of flights on my way there – wise-cracking, motherly, easing me in with kindness and firm solicitousness – dissolving like watercolors in a glass of water. 

The man at my side – literally bossed this close to me by the Chief’s grasp – made a sound between a growl and a scoff. It pierced me through the bones, so sharply I flinched. I immediately realized how frustrated he was with this: how young and ridiculous and inadequate he judged me. 

He smelled like leather, like coffee, like – _gosh_ – actual gun powder. I was wearing glittery barrettes and a nail polish the shop assistant told me was called _Candy Dream_. 

But I wanted this job. Boy, I’d wanted it since I was five. 

So I was the first to turn towards my new partner: to look up at him – craning my chin till my neck hurt, because he was way taller than I expected. I was the first to offer my hand, even as the blue steel of his eyes burnt through me, even as the full blow of his scowl nearly knocked me off my feet. 

_Juliet O’Hara,_ I said. Chirped, because I was a child and socially awkward and didn’t know any better. _Nice to meet you, partner!_

Lassiter grunted. Gave me a perfunctory, brutal kind of handshake, the way you slap a broken vending machine to get your money back. Grunted something like a goodbye to the Chief, and stalked out of the office – the door rattling slightly in the silent wake of his anger. 

And this is how I met your Dad. 

Our first weeks together were – well, rough. Lassiter wasn’t exactly rude, because being rude would have implied talking to me for more than thirty seconds: he seemed content to simply ignore me. I was saddled with most of the paperwork, trailing after him from crime scene to crime scene – and yet I had never had so much spare time on my hands. I had never felt so alone in a room full of people. 

On the other hand, the distance made it easy to study my new partner. I actually started taking notes, filling a little spiral flip notebook I kept hidden in the last drawer of my desk, with bullet point lists and color-coded highlighters and diagrams, like an ornithologist studying a newly-discovered, extremely reclusive condor species. (The odds of getting my finger bitten off were more or less the same, too). 

After some heated internal debates, I had to conclude that, no matter how terribly wrong that might sound, I _did_ find Carlton Lassiter handsome. It wasn’t a dazzling, boyish beauty: the kind that makes you shiver with goosebumps want to be silly and funny and wild. (Oh, your father would kill me if he knew I’m writing you about boys. About _him_ as a _boy._ ) But he was handsome in a slightly old-fashioned, aftershave-smelling way: James Stewart, with harder edges. I’ve always been comfortably tall for a woman, enough to never be forced to get a neck kink every time I need to talk with a man; still, Carlton was tall enough that when we were standing side by side I barely came up to his shoulders, at the exact right height to smell the days he put his cologne on. In the following years, I would find myself forced to burrow his clothes on several occasions (after botched operations and long stakeouts and unexpected rainy days). His jacket sleeves easily doubled as mittens, my fingers half-lost in them. 

I was born in a place where people spend their lives fighting the muggy heat with cargo shorts and short-sleeved everythings, I was unused to be around a man sheathed almost exclusively in shirts and charcoal suits; around such a _classic_ picture of what a man should look like. Typing out reports on cases I’ve been barely permitted to work on, I would sometimes find myself glancing at my new partner, the strong lean line of him, the salt-and-pepper hair, and had a heartbeat of understanding for old time movie heroines, swooning in the hard-boiled detective’s arms. 

Was that feeling pervasive enough, strong enough to call it infatuation? Maybe. Frankly, I don’t think anything serious would have come from it – and that what the two of us came to have was two hundred percent more interesting than that could have ever been. 

In any case, your father himself rapidly cured me out of it. Because beside being handsome, he was also demanding, arrogant, pig-headed, and way moodier than any PMS woman I’ve ever had the chance to deal with. 

The half-aggravated half-derisive scoff I got on the first day was the most interaction we had for days; I had to personally hunt down the files of the cases we were supposed to work on together- I practically flung myself down the stairs every time we were called to a crime scene, so he wouldn’t be able to leave me behind. Nothing I did seemed to be anywhere close to right: snarls were abundantly employed, blood-freezing glares definitely abused. I got rid of of my frilliest skirts and pinkiest blouses, just because I didn’t have the energy to start grating on his nerves so early in the morning. 

Oh, Lily-love, those first weeks – they were miserable. I kept remembering my cheerleading camp days, the taunts and the cruel giggles of the other girls, and realized this wasn’t that much better. I would bet big money my partner was keeping sort of operation diary in that blasted black book of his, tallying off the days to my inevitable transfer request. 

And yet. 

And yet, I didn’t ask for transfer. A part of me, the one who squirmed painfully at every glare, every disdainful glance at my glossy lipsticks and colored pens, wanted to impress him. Desperately. Viscerally. I wanted to show him I wasn’t the silly beach babe he may think, that there was a reason I’ve been made detective this young; that, above all, he could trust me. I dreamed of the day I would prove myself worthy of knowing his secrets – of the day he would show me a sliver of the thing behind the armor. 

Because I could _feel_ there was more to him than what he let the world see. I glimpsed it in flashes – a warmth locked up in his rib cage, burning particles escaping through the cracks. I hoarded those flashes like fireflies in a jar, with savage glee, trying out their taste on the tip of my mouth. He was trying his hardest to hide away that warmth; I wanted it, was hungry for it. After all, I wouldn’t be in this line of work if I wasn’t endlessly starving for secrets. 

Months passed – first lurching forward, then picking up speed, the whirlwind of Psych and Shawn and the light of it spurring us into motion, again and again. Santa Barbara swelled with spring around us, all new green and flowers as fleshy as women’ mouths, an abundance of magnolia blossoms daily dressing Carlton’s car in white. My little Carlton notebook swelled with it. 

_List of Things I Know about L.:_

_1) really into history (_ really _into it: good Christmas gift option!)_

_2) really into coffee (three creams, four sugars)_

_3) rocky separation with wife_

_4) intensely against Greenpeace, Shawn Spencer, and, apparently, squirrels (???)_

_5) allergic to mint_

_6) loves Bon Jovi even if he fiercely denies it (seen a stash of CDs in the glove compartment)_

_7) can’t match a tie with a suit to save his life_

_8) Intensely against conversation during car rides. Intensely against conversation at all. Conversation with me, at least._

(Yes, I was really writing down this kind of lists about a colleague, all the time – with a dedication and a precise secretiveness that today would earn me a stalking charge in the blink of an eye. No matter what Uncle Shawn says, it wasn’t your Dad who corrupted me with obsessive list-making: that was a kink of mine long before I met him.) 

Still, it was shockingly frustrating work. I felt like I was hurling myself against the walls of a rocky Irish castle, trying to assault it with kind gestures and proffers of friendships, only to see my armies scattered, my generals come home bruised to blood. 

Lassiter – because in this moment of our history he wasn’t anything but Lassiter, the word Carlton still so tentative and awkward on my tongue I could barely think it – dragged me around like I was the dumb boss’s kid he had to look after for the day, telling me not to throw up at crime scenes, making a point of using those absurdly long legs to force me to a pathetic half-trot. I saw him bite his lip nearly through in the effort of not laughing at my jokes; when the separation papers finally came and he shot to smithereens his wife’s collection of little porcelain monsters, he preferred staring at the blinking screen of his computer for twenty minutes rather than talking to me. Rather than giving me _anything_. I still remember watching him from above the stack of the reports – the ones I wasn’t filling up, the ballpoint pen still wavering one inch above the paper, forgotten – as he sat there: the plaster-like pallor, the muscles feathering with the tension in his jaw _._

People, especially people who had known him from the time before I walked into his life, told me that Carlton reminded them of a ticking bomb: that one day he would snap, blow up, and the only thing to do would be to thrust yourself on the ground and hope the shockwave wouldn’t reach you. But I disagree. In that moment, and in the many others that would follow, Lassiter reminded me of the opposite: of the birth of black holes, matter contracting itself into in a single point, the energy so hot it sucks up light, until it all shrivels into nothingness. He reminded me of the way stars die. 

Now, I’m sure you’re a brilliant young woman, Lily: you will have already seen the danger lurking there. You will have already seen the particular trainwreck my thoughts could have lead us too – the trap in them. The one people had used to fetter young bright women since the dawn of agriculture and civilization, I think, and that have been hammered into us so viciously and so constantly it’s almost etched in our skin, a raised pattern of tattoos. 

The trap is, put very simply, this: you find a man who’s brooding and taciturn and angry; you have the suspicion (the hope) he’s not a completely terrible person under all his issues; you decide you’ll save him. Single-handedly, pouring your youth and your tenderness into him like a transfusion, immolating yourself on his altar, _because only good women can make good men._

Well, worry not, my dear niece. Young Jules was familiar with the pattern, and she hated it. I had already met my fair series of self-important men: looking down on me for my blond hair or my friendly smile or simply because I was young and toned and female – or because, the capital sin of the career girl, I had no interest in stopping being those things in order to be taken seriously. 

I could do both; I could _be_ both, even if it meant I would have to work twice harder than the rest of the world. Yet so many men, even well-intentioned dates, even smiling colleagues who still offered to chaperon me home no matter how many times I knocked them on their butts during training, didn’t seem to get it: that I could be Officer O’Hara and smell like coconut shampoo at the same time. 

I’m saying this, Lily-love, so you know I wasn’t completely blind. I knew I should bristle at the smugness in Carlton’s eyes. I knew I should tell him that being convinced every cop should look and act like a squinty Clint Eastwood to be the real deal was vintage at best and sad at worst. Had he been anyone else, I would have. 

But there were things – things that stopped me; things that prevented me from putting him in the Misogynist, Trigger-Happy, Old-School Cops category and be done with it. When he forgot how bitter he was about me being his new partner, he would sometimes open the door for me out of natural chivalry; once, during one of those epic, lush-green downpour that seemed to roar down from the skies and up the sea at the same time, he offered her his umbrella and refused to take it back, ignoring the rapidly soaking half of him exposed to the rain. 

When a girl swung an ax at my head in a candle-filled house and I somehow found myself holding the blade at her neck, feral with pain, feral with _rage_ , it was Carlton’s voice that made me stop; he who talked with the Chief, later that night and behind closed doors as I sat shivering at my desk, and saved my job. 

He was a conundrum: the more I tried not to care, the more he spilled out – the warmth below pushing to be seen. And I wanted to see it. 

So at night, after a day of aborted conversations, long silences, those patronizing ‘ _O’Hara, rule number 44 –’_ that made me want to dig my pump’s heel into one of his ridiculously large feet, I still updated the list, one point at a time. Sneak peek by sneak peek. 

_9) He’s loyal, in his own way._

_10) He fixed my problem with the Glock – I’ve never been this good at it before._

_11) He’s capable of caring. I know he is._

I swore off floral prints altogether; replaced my pretty lace-rimmed tops with little armies of business blue. I started waking up fifteen minutes earlier than my already punishing scheduled alarm to stop at the coffeehouse two blocks down the police station and get him a cup of disgustingly sweet coffee. I was cramming myself into a new shape, one better suited to the difficult world of Carlton Lassiter, to the new-leather smell of his car; and if some parts of me didn’t fit, I sucked it up and shoved them deep under the surface, where they couldn’t bother him. 

Don’t get me wrong: it wasn’t all bad. If I was constantly stifling one half of me – the fun-loving, optimist Jules who adored shopping and matching her evidence notebook with a glittery pen – another half was slowly blossoming to full size for the first time since forever. I could finally talk to someone about state-of-the-art police equipment and how it was necessary to provide even small-medium precincts with them; I could doze off against the car window with my mouth open or yell at the other cars without scandalizing anyone. And that Juliet, that one I had forced into silence not for a couple of months, but a _whole life_. To be finally able to be her, to be angry and smug and ferociously competitive, was exhilarating. Intoxicating. 

And there was progress. Less glares. Less dismissive grunts. Faint glimmers of something like respect, barely visible. In time, I was fairly sure my partner would come to count on me. I just had to stay put, work hard, count to ten in order not to react at his temper tantrums. Endure, endure, endure. 

Until. 

Until the day your father screamed too much, stepped too far, and young bumblebee Jules, and every other Jules inside her, just _snapped._

I don’t remember the details of the case: it must have been something trite and limply trivial, no matter how wrong it is to call the everyday horrors people inflict on each other trivial: a drugstore robbery, a victimless break-in, one of those crimes that required zero exciting investigative work and still demanded from you filled reports, meetings with the Chief, and a general consumption of bad coffee and energy bars. The banality of the whole thing probably contributed to what happened: nerves jittery under my skin, a streak of impatience like a snake in my belly. The air was cloyed with heat: I could feel the sun hammering down on my neck every time I crouched down to examine the stretch of yellow-taped pavement, morphing into a pulsing headache directly between my eyes. 

The tarmac was sweating under my shoes; a pinkish smear of strawberry milkshake drying up one inch from my knee. I was having a hard time concentrating on what the uniforms were telling me – good Uncle Buzz among them, bless him and the shade his overgrown body provided me – and Carlton had been practically impossible since the morning. Sweat was rolling down my neck, between my shoulder blades. I was acutely aware of the fact it would be hours before the cooling shelter of the car, a bathroom, the emergency aspirin in my desk drawer. 

In other words, it wasn’t the best day to confront me. I had already nearly bitten Buzz’s head off twice for how long it was taking him to fill me in. I was soaked in annoyance like it were gasoline; a struck match, and I’d catch fire. 

Your father, Lily-love, has always been _excellent_ at providing struck matches. 

A clip-clap of approaching shoes, tight as compressed air. A second shadow fell across me, unmistakable. 

“What are you _doing_ , O’Hara?” 

Buzz’s little speech spiraled away in a blabbering of words. I blinked, and craned my head back, a glimpse of my – already pissed, already half-enraged – partner sliding into my field of vision. 

Carlton was standing over me with his hands against his hips, the rolled-up sleeves the only concession to the heat; pale skin almost glowing in the glare. His eyes were light enough I could see he was squinting even behind the shades; if at me or at the sun or at both, I don’t know. 

“Asking for an update,” I answered. It took me longer than usual to summon my best firm-but-friendly voice, to remember who I was talking to. _Calm, Juliet. Calm, calm_. “Looking for evidence.” 

A snort. 

“Evidence? O’Hara, I don’t know if you noticed – but this case practically solved itself. Sweet justice, Academy exercises were more complicated So don’t waste my time looking for evidence we have no need for.” 

He was trying to pick a fight; that irked me. He was also echoing my exact thoughts – the uncharitable grudge of them – and that irked me more. 

“We should still comb the place,” I replied, mostly to contradict him. “We could be missing something here.” 

“We’re missing absolutely nothing. You’re free to waste your time as you see fit, O’Hara – knitting sweaters, listening to Neil Young, dilly-dallying around useless crime scenes, I don’t care – but right now, I’m saddled with you, and I’m Head Detective. And my time is too precious for this.” 

I started so hard I nearly lost my balance: cheeks burning as if he had just slapped me. The Neil Young comment – oh, that hurt. Only once did I dare pop my _Harvest Moon_ into the Crown Vic’s player, and I promptly re-sheltered it at the sidelong glare I got because of it. He had no right to bring it back now, no right at all. 

“I’m not wasting your time,” I said. Whispered – hating the way I choked on the words, how young my voice sounded. “I’m your partner.” 

He laughed. It wasn’t a good laugh. 

“So the Chief said. She has wanted to get even with me since day one – couldn’t believe the woman was so vindictive, though.” 

Oh, Lily: let me stop this for a second – freeze the image of your grown-ups in one of their least honorable moment. Please, please – don’t believe for one minute your Dad believed all those horrible things: a part of them, probably, but not the whole of it, and certainly not that way. It was the rage talking; the ugly thing that sometimes swallowed him up, and wanted to devour the whole world with him. Sometimes, I got the impression Carlton starved for confrontation like people starve for food and water. It made me jittery, seeing him like that, and vaguely scared, for his job, for the people around him – and for _him_ , always for him. 

But I couldn’t tell the difference, back then; couldn’t navigate the tricky lines of Carlton Lassiter’s map surely enough to understand what was going on, shrug off his foul mood, and get him the decent breakfast he had probably foregone that morning. And I don’t think it would have been right for me to understand, either. 

During our little verbal duel, Buzz had been standing frozen at my side; growing gradually stiffer as seconds tick by, breathing reduced to soundless shallowness. The rest of the uniforms on the scene in the shadows of the bodega on this side of the road, still as bunnies. But I was barely aware of them: I was barely aware of anything but me, the white-hot headache splitting my skull, the misery stuffed inside my chest, and the man in front of me, skull-pale and lanky and so blatantly unfair. 

I unfurled from my crouch, standing as tall as I could: my hands curled into fists as bleached-knuckled as his. 

“I’m not a punishment, Lassiter,” I said, very calmly. “I’m your partner –I’m a _detective._ And I don’t think it’s right for you to disrespect me in front of the men.” 

Carlton’s face rippled, then turned into a perfectly blank canvas: I could barely make out the eyebrows arching behind his shades. “I’m still your senior officer, O’Hara,” he said, slowly. “And you too should show me some respect.” 

Three months before, three _weeks_ before, that tone would have shocked me into silence: steady, authoritative, scorching-cold. 

Now, it only pissed me off. 

“I’ve shown you nothing but respect since the first day, _detective_ ,” I replied. I could feel my nails digging into my palms, painfully, and didn’t care. “And I’m just trying to do my job here. To follow the procedure.” 

His eyebrows twitched higher. The start of a flush blooming over his collar. “You want to teach me about procedure? Are you saying I don’t know how to do my job?” 

“I’m not saying that!” 

“Well, _I_ should be the one the judge that, O’Hara.” He took a step forward, closer. A potential of chaos – a potential of broken things, screaming, destruction – came off him in waves, throbbing like a second heart. I watched his mouth twist into an ugly line, and knew he was striking to hurt. 

“Maybe I should remind you you’ve been a detective for less than a full year. Maybe you should take a walk and cool your head while I do our job. Get me a coffee while you’re at it – you know the _procedure_ of that, right?” 

I expected the blow – but, ah, I didn’t think he would stoop so low. I had enjoyed bringing him his coffee, that little silly ritual, no matter how one-sided it was; the pleasure of walking through the coffeehouse’s doors and being able to order for “me and my partner”. He never said anything about it, of course, but since he had been slurping down the Styrofoam cup I offered him without complaining, I had assumed he didn’t hate it as much as he hated the rest of me. And now he had used it against me. Used it to make me feel small, and ridiculous. 

My mind cleared. Filled with electric buzz. 

_You have the most uncanny ability to take good things,_ I thought, ferociously, looking at the man before me, a gasbag, a stranger, _and make them rot._

“That’s enough,” I heard myself say. My voice was still low, but echoing – filling the air like the iron smell of rain after a storm. I was the one to take a step forward, now, and something in me growled with triumph when he faltered back. 

“What the heck are you talking about, O’Hara?” 

“I’m done,” I said again. “That’s it. I’m done trying to patch things up with you, Lassiter. I’m done groveling and biting my tongue and being gentle and kind and respectful. I’m done trying to get you to find me tolerable.” One more step. I was close enough my nose brushed his chin. My lips peeled off my teeth. “I’m done trying to make up for the fact that I _exist_.” 

Around us, the silence was mortal: a battlefield kind of hush. The hammering sun and the headache and the exhaling tarmac, the proximity of us, it all mingled together in a dazzling swirl of gold, and I suddenly realized that if Lassiter still thrummed with his particular brand of rage, so did I. If he was burning, so _was I_. 

In that moment, as I bared fangs at my partner and prepared to sink claws deeper, I accepted what I had known all along: that the only person I knew that could rival with him in head-butting, who was as angry as he was, was me. 

“Listen to me and listen closely, _partner_ ,” I went on, biting off the last word like the worst of insults. “From this day on, there will be no more trying to be friends. No more free coffees, no more attempts at conversation, no more goodmornings and goodnights. I’ll still respect you as my colleague, and do my job well, and watch your back during police operations, but that’s it.” 

He said nothing: the blood which had rushed to his cheeks was nowhere to be seen, evaporated in the heat. I slipped on my shades, feeling my hands shake a little, feeling the growling thing in me hurt and revel at the same time, and shouldered my way past him. 

“Now, I’m going to interrogate the second clerk, to see if the versions match. Feel free to wait in the car.” 

I pushed through the shop’s door without looking back. 

I kept my word, Lily. And considering the naturally sociable, kind person I hope I am, it was surprisingly easy. 

I wasn’t outright bullying your Dad, mind you. My reports stayed impeccable, my outward signs of respect unfaltering. I still discussed cases with him, presented him the test results from the forensic guys as soon as they got to my desk; our car rides to crime scenes were flawless studies in professional silence. I simply stopped trying to do anything more than that. I didn’t talk to him if it wasn’t strictly necessary, never asked him how he was or how he spent the weekend, even when he stumbled in with eyes circled so deeply they looked like bruises, even when he was still elbow-deep in evidence boxes as I left on Saturday nights. On the Monday morning when he walked in with a wrist completely pillowed in white gauze, I didn’t ask him what happened until Buzz did it for me. 

(That part wasn’t particularly easy. So, on those nights I would drop by at the Psych office and spend the night watching Val Kilmer marathons, furiously stuffing my mouth with Kong pao chicken and firmly not thinking about the lonely man slaving over reports, the photos of horrible deaths filling his eyes.) 

I was so good at it, in fact, that no one – not even Shawn, who back then orbited the station like a buzzing, lush planet taunting me with its untouched forests and dazzling landscapes – noticed anything was amiss. 

Probably because _nothing_ was amiss: we hadn’t had the occasion to build anything solid enough to be broken. And that made me so sad and so mad I sometimes wanted to kick the vending machine just to work it out of my system. 

Still, I wasn’t going to give in. If I had to live like this for the next two, three years of my life – until I got another good offer, until I tried my luck with FBI – so be it. I’d be luckier with my next partner. I’d have more chances, better chances. We wouldn’t have been a good match anyway. Right? 

(Wrong.) 

I was so focused on sticking to my plan, so busy excising Lassiter from my life as much as humanly possible, that the day I sensed a sudden presence behind my laptop screen and looked up to find him in front of my desk, I was shocked into silence. 

Because Lassiter was standing there in shirtsleeves, hair mussed enough to qualify as disheveled, and looked pained and unsure and absolutely miserable. 

Because Lassiter was holding a coffee in his hand, steaming and redolent of my favorite Arabica ground coffee blend, and was setting it down on the edge of my desk. 

Oh. 

_Oh._

That was unexpected. That I had no strategy for. 

Slowly, oh so slowly, I stopped pretending to type on the keyboard. Looked up at him over the screen. 

“Lassiter,” I said, voice clipped even to my ears. “Is something the matter? Is there a problem with the Addison’s report?” 

He blinked. Very fast. 

“Ah – no. No problem at all.” 

Silence. I let it ripen between us, fill the space, sticky and uncomfortable. 

Clearly, he was drowning. A handful of unbearable seconds later, he pushed the cup closer to my elbow, tentatively, as if an electric force field would suddenly snap into place and stop his heart. The cheery logo of my coffeehouse blinked at me from its side. 

I studied the cup: feeling a spark in the dark spot under my ribs, telling myself to smother it. I swallowed. Lifted my eyes back to his. 

“What’s this?” I asked, icily. 

“Ah – a coffee,” he replied. I watched him clasp his hands together, toying with his cuffs, physically making himself stop. “Your favorite, actually: one cream, no sugar. I did some research.” 

I didn’t have to feign annoyance then. “I can see it’s a coffee. What does it _mean_ , Lassiter?” 

“A peace offer,” he said, so softly his lips barely moved. If I wasn’t focusing every sense on his words, if I wasn’t projecting my whole self onto him, I wouldn’t have heard him in the tidy din of ringing phones and talking voices of the bullpen, the clipped clattering of hurried people running around. But I was. 

“There is no need for a peace offer. We’re not at war. You’re my partner, and we work together, and we try to do it in the most efficient and professional way.” 

“Yes, but –“He ran a hand through his hair, his sweet Cary Grant’s waves sticking out like porcupine’s quills, hands flailing in the general direction of the desk, the bullpen, me, him. Carlton Lassiter gesturing like a madman; I hadn’t planned to ever see that, either. “– Something, something clearly changed.” 

_Ah._

I arched my eyebrows. “I thought this was what you wanted,” I said, mostly meaning it. 

Again, that whispering, the voice almost too soft to be heard. “I thought it, too,” he said, “but it turned out… I don’t. I _really_ don’t, Juliet.” 

He was the one talking like he couldn’t get in enough air, but it was me who suddenly couldn’t breathe well. 

I crossed my arms against my chest: leaning over, forcing him to hold my gaze. Something was unfurling inside me – something bold, awfully angry, awfully true, not completely vicious. I thought back to the useless misery of my first weeks here and our fight at the crime scene, how good it felt not to hide my claws, to the dull ache he had become since I gave up on him, and decided I had to get it all out, here, now. Now, or never again. 

“I wasn’t terrible to you,” I offered, voice so clipped I barely recognized it. “I’m _not_ mistreating you. I’m merely treating you the way you’ve treated me all this time.” 

He actually sounded taken aback by that. “But you never say _hi_ in the morning,” he protested. “You barely acknowledge me when we’re with other people. You never tell me anything about what you’re thinking or what you’re doing unless it’s work-related. You sigh when I take five seconds longer with a suspect than you would.” 

I felt my eyebrows knit into a half-murderous frown. I wanted to laugh and slap him at the same time. 

“Exactly,” I snapped, “I was merely giving you the Lassiter treatment, detective. I was being _you_.” 

Lassiter opened his mouth, closed it, eyes blown to lovely blue saucers of shock. “But, you can’t,” he gasped out. “I mean, you can’t do it. You’re a –” 

“–You better not mean to end that sentence with any of the words ‘woman’, ‘girl’, or ‘young woman’, or I swear I’ll impale you with the lamp’s stem, Carlton.” 

The flash of panic flitting across his eyes – too expressive for his own good – told me his planned sentence was dangerously close to what I said. For a moment, I saw how he must have looked as a guilty five-year-old: knee-deep in the mud his mother told him not to play in in his new Sunday suit. 

He tried to summon anger then; I could see it – despite myself, despite my best intentions, I was already attuned enough to the complicated inner workings of him to see the signs. But I also watched him swallow it back, refuse to let it ride him. Instead, he held up his hands, as if I was aiming a gun at his chest under the desk. 

I liked that. I liked that my eyes could pin him there just like a gun. 

“Fine,” he said. “I have no idea how to talk to people. I have no idea how to say I’m sorry. But I...” 

He dropped his arms. Let me see the bruises under his eyes, the exhausted slope of his shoulders. “Please, Juliet. I. I kind of miss it. The conversation, the goodmornings and goodnights. I kind of miss it all. And I don’t think I can live with another me.” A heartbeat of hesitation. “ _Please_.” 

I know I should have probably made it harder for him. I know there were several more steel traps waiting there, in the gaps between the words, in the air between us: that a man who couldn’t bear his own company wasn’t the best choice for a girl who barely accepted there was more than sunlight and friendliness about her. Sure this little California’s orchard could provide me with sweeter fruits, easier people, with no need to be saved from anything – especially not from themselves. Sure it could. 

But though I mask it well enough, I’ve never been a patient woman: I had no time for dilly-dallying when I already knew what I wanted, or whom. And it was too late. I had already called him Carlton, the name slipping through my defenses when I wasn’t looking: a treacherous little spy of the things moving inside me. 

Because for some reason I muddily understood, glowing just out of the corner of my eye, I had never really wanted to give up on that difficult, grouchy scarecrow of a man. Because while I had been one hundred percent ready to tell him no if he didn’t get at least part of his speech right, I had _wanted_ to say yes from the moment he shyly showed up at my desk with that coffee in his hands. 

Not that he needed to know any of it, of course. 

I tilted my head, resting my chin on crossed hands, elbows balanced against the desk, Bond-Villain-style. Pretended to mull it over. 

“Fine,” I declared. 

He jumped. He very nearly jumped. “Fine?” 

“Fine. But if we’re to try this again, there will be conditions,” I finally said. 

“Anything,” Carlton blurted out. It was getting _very_ hard not to smile. 

I held up a hand. “No snorting or grumbling or eye-rolling at my wardrobe. If I walk in dressed head to toe in glittery hot pink tulle, you will keep quiet about it and hand me the right case files and offer no comment unless explicitly solicited.” 

I saw the quivering bulge in his right cheek, and knew from experience the tell of someone biting down on their tongue to keep from saying unfortunate things. I allowed myself a split-second grin, hiding it behind the fingers I was ticking points off with. 

“On Fridays, the coffee is on you. On Mondays, I’m happy to take care of it – the rest of the weekdays will be evenly shared. No more sneering when I try to talk to you in the car. No more pulling rank just because we disagreee on something. And On Thursday, we listen to Mister Young’s greatest hits. All day long.” 

Carlton wheezed out something like a death rattle. “Neil Young – O’Hara, _why?_ I understand revenge, but – why him?” 

“Because his music cheers me up, relaxes me, and helps me think when under stress,” I replied, implacable. 

“This is sadistic, O’Hara,” he grumbled. Half-heartedly.“You’re a sadist, O’Hara.” 

I gave him a smile which was actually absolutely sadistic. “Take it or leave it, Carlton,” I chirped. Then I extended my hand across the desk, past the computer, past the gulf between us. “So – do we have a deal?” 

He nodded, in a way people nowadays rarely moved – stiffly, solemnly, the way knights probably used to kneel in front of their lord to pronounce oaths. He leaned in, toward me and my outstretched arm, and I was brutally hit by the rawness of his face, the sheer relief I saw there. 

“We have a deal, O’Hara.” 

_He cares,_ came the thought, soft as breathing, slightly intoxicating. _He actually cares._

_He_ wants _to care._

His hand wrapped around mine: a solid handshake, short and hard and efficient, and yet completely unlike the sad attempt in Vick’s office. I felt the gun calluses on his palm, his perpetually cold-tipped fingers, the secretly graceful slant of his wrist. For the first time, I felt I was touching a man – not a Lassiter, not detective, but something more. A real person. A _Carlton_. 

“No more Lassiter treatment, then?” 

“No more Lassiter treatment.” 

And then he smiled, so fast I nearly missed it between blinks, leaving an imprint of light against my eyelids like a sunflare. 

My own smile was a lot less sadistic, now. Our fingers came free; I curled mine around the cup, making the gesture slow and deliberate, because it felt important. I brought it to my lips as I watched him scurry back to his desk, practically skipping. 

The coffee was already lukewarm: the cream not nearly mixed in enough. It left a butter-greasy film all over my tongue. 

It was the best coffee I’d ever had. 

That’s the story, my dear Lily: how your awfully stubborn father and your equally stubborn aunt came to be _Lassiter and O’Hara_ , the patented copyright, and finally grew up into surprisingly well-adjusted adults. There’s more to it, of course, more adventures ,more fights: he would still hurt me, and I would still hurt him, as human beings tend to do. To this day, your Dad is one of the few people in this world who make me catch fire with anger; when we are together, I turn into a monster of competitiveness that would put even my over-achieving 12-year-old self to shame. But if I went back to that afternoon, with his terrible burnt coffee and Carlton’s baby blues pleading forgiveness, I would do it all again. I would take it all – the fights, the glory, the sun and the rain – a million times again. 

I hope you’ll find someone who’s willing to stand at your desk and buy you your favorite coffee just on the off chance of you being something more than strangers. I do hope you’ll find that person, Lily, and feel that special _click_ in your head, and think, _Oh, so it’s you: you’re the one I was looking for._

But I have no doubt it will happen. Over the years, I’ve come to believe the best things, the richest things, aren’t supposed to come easily: but they _do_ come, and you’ll recognize the ones you want to fight for – feel them pulling at you with something more real and true than any plan you could make. I believed it when I met Shawn, and everybody knows how that went. But I believed it about me and Carlton, too. The things we should hold closer to the heart are the ones who make sense even when nothing else does: for me, that’s Uncle Shawn. For me, that’s your Dad. 

Pick your battles, Lily-love. And when you fight them, know I’m watching your back. 

With love, 

Aunt Jules 

* 

As she wrote her name, Juliet realized her fingers were trembling slightly around the pen. It made her smile. Such emotion, in these notebook pages, in a single word: a piece of her heart, trapped in the swirl of ballpoint ink. It would be faded by the time Lily could read it: the paper feathery, curling around the edges every time it rained. But it would be there; it would be there, carrying their story – all the way to the first member of the next generation. It seemed important, crucial. It seemed one step from holy. 

Somewhere over her head, past the air vents and the hospital rooftop, thunders crackled: a storm, sheets of rain unleashed upon the city. Juliet thought of the plane she was supposed to catch the next morning, of the State Street palms hanging their jewel-green heads under the downpour, of how fitting it was Carlton Lassiter’s first born came to the world carrying rain and cleansing water with her. She pocketed her pen, smoothed down the letter: folded it in half and then again and stuffed it in her blouse, to warm up against her skin. 

At some deep level of bones and veins – no input required from her conscious mind – she had already decided she wouldn’t tell Carlton about the letter. Instead, she would buy a simple paper envelope from the shop, put the letter in it, and give it tor Marlowe. No one else would know about it except for the women in Carlton’s life: his wife, his daughter, his partner. That seemed fitting, too. 

A ruckus of squeaking sneakers and voices, at the opposite end of the corridor. Juliet looked up already knowing what she would see. And here he was: her boyfriend, her lovely-shaped faux-psychic, flanked by his best friend and his father, a monstrous hot pink teddy bear in his arms. Gus was complaining, hissing at Shawn to keep quiet, making even more noise in the process. Henry was screaming into his phone. Her hours of quiet reverie was officially over. 

Shawn peered from behind the stuffed bear’s gigantic flapping arm, grinned, filled with light at the sight of her. 

Juliet laughed. 


End file.
